T. E. Lawrence

Contents lists

1888-1910

1911

1912

1913

1914

1915-16

1917-18

1919-20

1921

1922

1923

1924

1925

1926

1927

1928

1929

1930

1931

1932

1933

1934

1935

Updated June 2012

T. E. Lawrence to John Buchan

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Clouds Hill
Moreton
Dorset

5.VII.25

Dear Buchan,

The oracle responded nobly. I was sent for by Trenchard on Wednesday last (horribly inconvenient, for my revolver course did not finish till Saturday, yesterday) and was told that I was acceptable as a recruit.

The immediate effect of this news was to put me lazily and smoothly asleep: and asleep I've been ever since. It's like a sudden port, after a voyage all out of reckoning.

I owe you the very deepest thanks. I've been hoping for this for so many years, and had my hopes turned down so regularly, that my patience was completely exhausted: and I'd begun wondering if it had ever been worth waiting and hoping for. Odd, that the Air Force should seem to me (after trial too!) as the only way of getting across middle age. I wish I could make you some sort of return.

Formalities will take some weeks: but I should change skins in September at latest.

Please inform your family that the bike (Boanerges is his name) did 108 miles an hour with me on Wednesday afternoon. I think the news of my transfer had gone to its heads: (cylinder heads, of course).

More thanks,

Yours ever

T E Shaw

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T. E. Lawrence chronology

1888 16 August: born at Tremadoc, Wales

1896-1907: City of Oxford High School for Boys

1907-9: Jesus College, Oxford, B.A., 1st Class Hons, 1909

1910-14: Magdalen College, Oxford (Senior Demy), while working at the British Museum's excavations at Carchemish

1915-16: Military Intelligence Dept, Cairo

1916-18: Liaison Officer with the Arab Revolt

1919: Attended the Paris Peace Conference

1919-22: wrote Seven Pillars of Wisdom

1921-2: Adviser on Arab Affairs to Winston Churchill at the Colonial Office

1922 August: Enlisted in the Ranks of the RAF

1923 January: discharged from the RAF

1923 March: enlisted in the Tank Corps

1923: translated a French novel, The Forest Giant

1924-6: prepared the subscribers' abridgement of Seven Pillars of Wisdom

1927-8: stationed at Karachi, then Miranshah

1927 March: Revolt in the Desert, an abridgement of Seven Pillars, published

1928: completed The Mint, began translating Homer's Odyssey

1929-33: stationed at Plymouth

1931: started working on RAF boats

1932: his translation of the Odyssey published

1933-5: attached to MAEE, Felixstowe

1935 February: retired from the RAF

1935 19 May: died from injuries received in a motor-cycle crash on 13 May

1935 21 May: buried at Moreton, Dorset